Freshworks, Eka Founders Launches Founder-First Fund For SaaS Startups

Together Sets Up Early-Stage VC Fund For SaaS Startups With A Corpus of $85 Mn

SUMMARY

Together Fund is a founder-first venture capital fund created by founders for founders

Together aims to help India’s SaaS startups build and scale across geographies to establish India into a true product nation

The startup has brought together a network of 150+ founders and operators across India to offer contextual guidance to early-stage startups

Together Fund, a founder-first venture capital fund, was launched today with an initial corpus of $85 Mn. Launched by Girish Mathrubootham (founder and CEO, Freshworks), Manav Garg (founder and CEO, Eka Software), Shubham Gupta (ex-Matrix Partner) and Avinash Raghava (ex-Accel), the fund will back SaaS startups.

The fund’s limited partners include — Ritesh Arora, BrowserStack; Kunal Shah, CRED; Aneesh Reddy, Capillary; Gaurav Munjal, Unacademy.

India’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market is set to attain $18 Bn-$20 Bn in revenue and capture 7-9% of the global SaaS market by 2022. The venture has brought together a network of more than 150 founders and operators across India and Silicon Valley to provide both tactical and strategic assistance — tribal knowledge + contextual guidance around product-market-fit or customer acquisition as well as broader challenges around entering new markets, planning further fundraising, and preparing the SaaS startups for culture changes.

The fund will invest from $250K to $3 Mn in seed, Pre-Series and Series A rounds. With a team that spans across the US and India, Together aims to help entrepreneurs build the product and achieve product-market-fit for the crucial zero to one part of the startup journey.

Additionally, Together will also be helping companies in getting better partner deals from vendors and open access to the best CEO coaches. Mathrubhootham said, “My ambition for Together Fund is not about making it the most successful VC firm in the country; rather, it is to be recognised as India’s most founder-friendly VC.”

Together’s ecosystem of founders & operators comprises Ashwini Asokan, founder & CEO, Mad Street Den, Karthi Mariappan, founder & CEO, Hippo Video; Krish Subramanian, cofounder & CEO, Chargebee; Shanti Mohan, founder & CEO, LetsVenture, Vetri Vellore, founder & CEO, Ally and many others.